


The Haul

by jedishampoo



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-27
Updated: 2010-09-27
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:12:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedishampoo/pseuds/jedishampoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We'll always have the communications system. Hakkai/Gojyo, space romance with a touch of the Chinese seventh night legend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Haul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chibi_zoe](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=chibi_zoe).



**Author's notes:** Written for [](http://chibi-zoe.livejournal.com/profile)[**chibi_zoe**](http://chibi-zoe.livejournal.com/) in the [](http://community.livejournal.com/7thnight_smut/profile)[**7thnight_smut**](http://community.livejournal.com/7thnight_smut/) AU Saiyuki exchange. This is a little bit of a mish-mash of a space story and the 7th night legend (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_Xi>). Thanks to my awesome beta [](http://whymzycal.livejournal.com/profile)[**whymzycal**](http://whymzycal.livejournal.com/) , and my other awesome beta [](http://sharpeslass.livejournal.com/profile)[**sharpeslass**](http://sharpeslass.livejournal.com/).

**The Haul, Part 1**

  
Gojyo was supposed to be doing official-type work. He was supposed to be running one of the monthly systems-checks required by ATI regs, the systems check that was already a week or so overdue.

Just that morning his asshole boss had said, _run the fucking checks before they fucking ground us for NRC_. But Gojyo knew a non-compliance grounding was pretty damned unlikely. The ATI powers were scared shitless of the captain, even if they were supposed to be the ones in charge. Hell, everyone for a dozen light-years in any direction was scared shitless of the captain, except the captain’s own crew.

So instead of checking systems, Gojyo was playing with the transcom, the one he’d spent the last week personally upgrading – scavenging and trading for parts to boost its range. He’d fiddled for days with the compute-bands and sensor-levels, trying to pick up as many freqs as possible.

Hell, all the upgrades he’d made to this boat should have been considered freelance work, and ATI should be paying him for it. Or at least the captain should be paying, since he was the owner-franchisee. None of the other OmniCorp TG-3 Eck-haulers had the transmission range, speed, or climate control the good old _Buddha’s Dragon II_ was sporting. And it was all thanks to him.

“Oh, you naughty boy! Watch where you’re putting that laser-bore,” a tinny but sultry female voice said from the transcom.

Gojyo checked the compute-band. “Sweet,” he said, even though the tinny chick couldn’t hear him. She was pre-recorded, and he’d just picked up porn from somewhere in the Sagittarius Arm.

“If you do that again, I’ll spank you. Hee!”

“Sweet,” Gojyo sighed again. He left the trans on the porn-freq, stretched out his long, sexy legs, and rocked back in his three-sixty chair to have a listen. He didn’t even need a viz-link; it was good porn. And of course his asshole boss had to choose just that moment to walk in on him.

“What the living fuck are you doing?”

Gojyo rocked the chair forward and keyed off the porn-band at the first sound of the door whooshing open, but not before the sound effects had gotten a whole lot louder and slappier and heavy-breathier.

“You’re listening to fucking porn, aren’t you, asshole? Instead of running the checks like I fucking told you to? I don’t know why I pay you, you fucking pervert.”

 _Pervert, right, like his ears are lily-white, what with a mouth as filthy as that_. Still, Gojyo kept his cool and grinned up at Mr. Boss-Captain-Sanzo.

“Hey! I was checking the trans. That was porn from Talverry, Cap’n S. In the Sag Arm? Boosts like that are why you pay me.”

“Hnh,” Sanzo grumbled, pretending to not be impressed. “Not after ATI has my ass, you pervert cocksucker.”

“And my cocksucking ain’t bad, either,” Gojyo said with an eyebrow-waggle, pushing it. When Sanzo reached for his pistol, Gojyo raised his hands in surrender. At Sanzo’s nasty-looking snarl, he waved them in apology. Someone as gorgeous as Sanzo shouldn’t be able to look so damned scary. “Sorry. Sorry! I’ll run the check.”

Sanzo edged his hand off his piece and swiped at the air, ignoring Gojyo’s apology. “Fuck that. Get the _Dragon_ running. We’ve got a split-hire. Long-haul.”

Gojyo leaned forward. “How long?”

“Huian, off of Altair.”

Gojyo whistled. That was a long haul, a quarter of the way across the known galaxy. And the split-hire meant a higher percentage. It was no wonder Sanzo was in such a good mood. “What is that — twenty-one weeks round-trip?”

“Twenty-four.”

Gojyo did a quick scan of his mental calendar and an even quicker mental calculation. This trip was gonna net him a lot of card-playing money and a whole lotta sex when he got back home. “That’s three holidays. Awesome. How much haul?”

Sanzo actually smirked. “Let me put it this way: you’ll be bunking with the kid.”

“We gotta knock down the bulkheads, huh?” So not only would there be so much equip-haul they’d have to share crew quarters, there’d be no common room and only half a galley. Still, for the money they’d be making, Gojyo would even bunk with Goku. “Your cabin, too?”

“Stop asking so many fucking questions.” Sanzo waved his hand again. “Just fucking get us to the station. Now, so we can pick up the haul.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Gojyo said, and keyed in the start-up sequence.

***

Gojyo was used to long hauls. He could fill most of his days with piloting or tinkering or cruising the freqs or dreaming of what he was going to do with his cash. But the kid was bored.

“Got anything for me to do?” Goku asked Gojyo for the third time that shift, and at least the thousandth time in the four weeks they’d been hauling. His weird gold eyes were wide and begging. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a hell of a lot for him to do when they weren’t loading or unloading.

“Didja calibrate the melon-room like I told ya?”

“Yeah. Melons’re good. Wish I could eat a few.”

“Not on your life, kid,” Gojyo warned. “Captain S’ll count them bastards and kick your ass if any’re missing.”

“Nah. I’ve been good. And I can handle the captain.”

That was true, to a point. Goku pissed Sanzo off, ‘cause everybody pissed Sanzo off. But Goku had a way of keeping himself out of real trouble where Sanzo was concerned, and Gojyo couldn’t explain why. Sanzo had cashed Goku outta detention somewhere without telling anyone until he’d hired him. He’d certainly got his money’s worth out of the deal, too. Goku was a smart kid — too smart for this work.

Sometimes, when Sanzo wasn’t looking, Goku would try to kill boredom by arranging and rearranging the cargo to maximize area and create little pockets of living space. Or he’d make room in one of the growing-holds to plant a little something for himself. And Gojyo had promised not to tell for a share of the booty, though he suspected Sanzo knew already and let the kid do it, just to keep him busy and happy.

Sanzo sure didn’t give a shit about Gojyo. Gojyo could handle that, though, for the pay and the room and board. He just flew the ship and stayed outta Sanzo’s way as much as possible, and if he made a few customizations and a few side deals along the way, well, Sanzo showed approval by not bitching about it.

“When are we gonna get there?” Goku whined.

“Fifty-five days. Give or take a day,” Gojyo said. At Goku’s despairing eye-roll, Gojyo sighed. “Inventory the fuel or something. Tell you what: check the burners for me now and then. Help me keep ‘em at max run and max-effish. Cap’n’ll let us sell half the overage at Huian so we can zip home. Then he’ll split it with me, and I’ll split my split with you.”

“Awesome!” Goku said and ran out of the cockpit. The door whooshed closed behind him, and Gojyo sighed again. Kid would do it, too, and he’d do a good job. That meant only a quarter of the fuel money to Gojyo.

He was too fucking nice, was the problem. He was a real pushover.

With the kid gone, Gojyo dug out his stash of smokes, then coded for the cockpit’s vent system. When he felt a blast of cold, clean air, he lit up. Technically, smoking on board — especially on haul — was against regs in a big way. Sanzo let him do it, though, but only ‘cause he was a smoker, too.

Gojyo inhaled smoke, exhaled smoke, and watched it whisk away into the ventilation duct. He let his eyes drift across the tilted readout console — modded to forty-seven degrees for his personal comfort. The red, green, and amber number- and dot-patterns meant all was good. Idly he keyed in the area-freqs for Huian and Altair systems, just to see what was going on.

Gojyo would bet the range of his transcom against anything even the military could put together. He heard the good grease light-days ahead of everyone else, with barely a lag in trans-time. Sometimes he made money off it, too.

He closed his eyes and listened for a signal. He remembered reading in school, before he’d quit school, that people had once believed in FTL travel for humans. _No thanks_ , Gojyo thought. No way he’d wanna be squeezed into a wormhole the width of an atom or become a black hole, or whatever nasty shit happened to solid objects at that speed. Save FTL and atomic conduits for the trans; let people hire buses and haulers for themselves and their shit.

Someday, he decided, he’d start saving his gains instead of blowing ‘em on cards, ass, and booze. He’d get out of the long-haul business, set up in a nice, clean city on a nice, clean colony somewhere. Make a home base for traveling in style, letting someone else program the coords for him.

His daydreaming was interrupted by a crackle of connection from the comm.

“—to reach Navy or Galcorp officials en route to or departing from Huian system, specifically Huian Delta—”

The voice was male, and small but clear. Gojyo tapped the comm-pad, fine-tuning the connection. The voice grew louder as it repeated its message.

“—is a representative of Huian Delta Terraform Cooperative Partnership GLP, transmitting on behalf of Huian Delta government officials. I wish to reach Navy or Galcorp officials en route to or departing from Huian system, specifically Huian Delta, to provide official notification of management changes and of procedures. There will be new contacts and new regulations.” The voice seemed to sigh. “I will repeat this message once more this period. This is a representative—”

“Hey! Wait a nanosec,” Gojyo told the voice, then realized he hadn’t keyed for two-way. He slid his fingers across the board, trying to establish vid or outgoing, either or both — anything. For some reason, he felt the need to answer the voice. It sounded desperate or lonely, or something. Well, actually, it didn’t — the voice was dry, and the guy sounded like a professor or someone important like that, reading out the official daily bullshit. But Gojyo heard something behind the voice, and he had to let him know he was listening, even if there was a lag and the guy was gone already—

“—Huian Delta government officials. I wish to reach—”

“Yeah! Yeah,” Gojyo said into the comm, hoping the guy had a good pickup. “This is ATI hired, uh, transport _Buddha’s Dragon II_. Shit, I’ll give you the goddamned registry code later. We’re en route to Huian Delta. Copy?”

“—changes and of procedures. There will be new—”

The voice cut out suddenly, and there were a few seconds of silence. Gojyo listened, hoping the guy had heard and his message was just on a lag. It must have been, because the guy finally answered.

“Ah. Agricultural, Technology and Industrial Company, I believe? Do you have government officials on board?”

“Hey, I gotcha!” Gojyo crowed, then realized he’d left the two-way on. He forged ahead. “Nope, but we got one hell of a haul of equip and organics coming your way. Hope policy changes mean we’ll still get paid.”

A dozen or so seconds later, Gojyo got his reply. “Oh. The shipment? I — yes. I must say I’m surprised you received this transmission.” The guy was relieved, and maybe annoyed, and Gojyo wondered how he knew that.

“So you guys know you hired the best.”

“Yes, ah hah hah. I — anyway. I suppose you’ll need to know as well. There are new regulations in effect, based on financial considerations of—”

“Dude, you’ll have to talk to my boss. Er. Captain Genjyo Sanzo. You got a great voice but sound like you’re pretty damned tired, so if you’ll hang on a few, I’ll go get ‘im.”

This time the lag-silence sounded surprised. “Thank you. Ah. Before you get him — how did you know I was tired?”

“Hell if I know. Tell you what: trans again on this freq tomorrow, and you can tell me about it,” Gojyo said before he’d really thought about it.

 _Shit! Shit. Damn it_ , Gojyo cursed at himself. He was potentially screwing up a good haul by flirting with some high-and-mighty corporation owner-dude over a planetary trans. Corporation owner-dudes didn’t want the likes of Gojyo flirting with them, usually. If Sanzo found out, Gojyo’s ass was scrap. Gojyo paged Sanzo anyway ‘cause he’d promised to. Gojyo wondered — hoped — if maybe the guy hadn’t known he was being flirted with. Maybe he thought haul-pilots were just saucy bastards.

Sanzo made record time, whooshing in the door and bitching up a storm. “The hell? Get the fuck out while I talk to this asshole,” he ordered.

Gojyo got out. Part of him hoped the guy would call back, even if it was to just tell him off.

***

The guy never called him back. Gojyo kept the freq-numbers locked in for most of the next day shift-period, and the shift after that, and the one after that. For the first week or so afterwards, he’d even checked it once or twice during the night-drift, just to see if anything had come through. But he’d never heard a thing, and Sanzo had started bitching that he wasn’t getting the regular comm traffic he needed to do his job correctly. So Gojyo had stopped tying up the lines for someone he barely knew.

Once he’d tried to be all nonchalant, asking Sanzo, _So, what did that customer guy have to say?_ Sanzo had looked at him with a weird expression and said, _I’ll fucking tell you when you need to know, pervert asshole_. Gojyo had decided not to push it after that.

Eventually they were only a couple weeks out from delivery, and Gojyo had mostly forgotten about it in the day-to-day routine of trying to keep Goku entertained. He and Goku were hanging in the cockpit like they usually did when Goku was on break. To try to make himself less annoying, Goku had brought some newly harvested radishes from his stash.

“Why the hell’d you grow radishes?” Gojyo asked, holding a long, fat radish in one hand and running his fingers over the trans controls with the other hand. The radish still had leaves and dirt on top of it. He crunched into it. It tasted pretty good, but still, it was a _radish_. Outta all the organics Goku could’ve picked …

Goku shrugged. “Don’t take up too much space. An’ they’re easy to graft without gettin’ into the client’s capital.”

“Suppose,” Gojyo said. He snapped off another bite. The radish was sharp, all right, with some real zing. And at least it was fresh and way better than their assigned, pre-packaged Nutri-Meals.

They ate, snap-crunching in the silence of the cockpit. Gojyo watched as Goku rocked back and forth, back and forth, in the copilot’s chair. His brown hair was wet from where he’d got caught in the veg-room’s envirosystem cycle, and water was dripping down onto the shiny, synthetic leather of the chair. Goku’s hair was getting really long, like he hadn’t bothered to give it regular trims. Gojyo supposed he should teach the kid things like that and felt guilty that he hadn’t. Goku looked older, too, in his forehead and eyes. It was like he’d aged on the trip, losing his youth little by little while Gojyo watched.

Gojyo wondered what he himself would look like by the time he finally stepped off his last haul. He realized he didn’t want to think about it.

“I heard that if ya pinch your nose when ya eat it, it’ll taste like potatoes. Or maybe that was carrots,” Goku said, pinching his nose and taking a bite.

“Huh,” Gojyo said, and tried a bite that way for himself. He took a few experimental chews. The spicy zing was unmistakable. “Nope. Still tastes like a goddamned radish.”

“Good radishes, though,” Goku said, still holding his nose and chewing.

Gojyo was trying to think of a witty comeback to that when the comm crackled.

“Agricultural Technology and Industrial Company hauler _Buddha’s Dragon Two_ registry number one-one-nine-seven-eight-XT-five-two-one are you receiving this transmission? This is Cho from Huian Delta—”

“Whoa!” Gojyo said, and slammed his palm onto the console to get a two-way going. It was the guy’s voice, the guy from weeks back, and he was talking all fast and breathless. “Copy, uh, Cho. This is us. The _Dragon_. How’s it going?”

“Ah, good. Thank goodness,” Cho said, and sounded like he meant it. He’d said it right away, too, which meant there wasn’t a lag to speak of. “What is your ETA?”

“Eleven point eight days at this capacity. Uh, we’re almost never late, I promise ya—”

“I understand. Are you carrying medical supplies, by any chance?”

“Medical supplies?” Gojyo asked.

Goku was all wide-eyed and nervous-looking. “Should I go get Sanzo?” he whispered. When Gojyo ignored him, Goku jumped out of the chair and ran out of the cockpit.

“Not unless you ordered ‘em, I don’t guess,” Gojyo told Cho. “I don’t remember the whole manifest, but I can pull it up if you want. We’ve got some basic regulation sickbay supplies, for the crew. What happened? Are you okay?”

“Ah ha ha, your paying clients are still alive, if that’s what you are asking.”

“Screw clients!” Gojyo said, again before he thought about it. “I mean, don’t screw ‘em, but — you know what I mean. I was asking ‘cause I was concerned, okay?”

“—yes. I’m sorry. I am…” There was a couple seconds’ pause. “I’m fine. I think. Do you have long-range, broad-limit transmission capability? Would you be willing to—”

 _Whoosh._

“What the blue fuck is going on, you idiot?”

“Ah. Is that Captain Sanzo?”

Sanzo glared at Gojyo, probably for having the hands-free two-way on and letting Cho hear him. Then he plopped into the copilot’s chair and coded for manual two-way. He took a deep breath.

“This is the Captain. How can I fucking help you?”

“There has been a bit of a — hah hah — a buyers’ war here on Huian,” Cho said. “The Huian legislators asked me to contact you to see if you had medical supplies, and if not, if you would transmit an order for us — _coff_ — to all available suppliers. We will pay you for your time and the time of your employee to use his skills to do so. If you can, just add it to our statement.”

Sanzo sighed and rubbed his temples under his shaggy blond hair. Like Goku, he’d gone a while without a trim. Then he punched and held the node for two-way trans.

“Negative. I’ll do it as a courtesy. My idiot fucking employee will trans if you’ll provide an itemized list of what you want.”

“Thank you. I appreciate — _coff_ — your assistance, and the legislators — _coff_ — anyway. Thank you.”

Cho coughed a couple more times — he didn’t sound good at all — and then read off a breathless list of medical chemicals and materials. He didn’t name any weapons, which surprised Gojyo. Buyers’ wars could be nasty businesses.

“Is the war over?” Sanzo asked Cho. He’d also noticed the lack of ordnance requests.

“Yes. Yes, it is. We are business — _coff_ — as usual. Ah. I need to sign off now.”

Gojyo punched the two-way node on his side. “My name’s Gojyo! Trans me on this freq if you need any help, if there’s anything I can do, at least.”

Sanzo glared and Gojyo mouthed _client courtesy_ at him. Sanzo’s lips thinned, but then he nodded.

“Thank you,” Cho said. “Truly. End transmission.”

***

Cho did trans back the next day-shift, and Gojyo was waiting for him, was waiting for the comm-crackle on Cho’s freq. He popped open a two-way as soon as he heard it.

“This is Hakkai Cho. Please say Gojyo is there, on this frequency. I’m trying to reach Gojyo, on the—”

“I gotcha! Gotcha,” Gojyo yelled, at the desperation in Cho’s — Hakkai’s — voice. “I’m here. Are you okay? Didja get the call from Opus-Indus?”

“Er — I’m sorry? Opus-Indus?”

That Hakkai — Cho — _shit_ , Gojyo already thought of him as _Hakkai_ — hadn’t heard of Opus-Indus worried Gojyo. So did the way he sounded strained and a little wobbly.

“We got an outfit outta Altair — Opus Industries L-L-something-or-other — with your meds and kits on the way. At least, about ninety percent of what you ordered. They shoulda transed you hours ago.”

Hakkai coughed, weakly. “I may have missed — ah. Well, I’ve been a bit … inj— indisposed. I’ll be fine, I think. I am awake now, at least. I think.”

“You don’t sound so good,” Gojyo said, though it was obvious Hakkai hadn’t yet lost his dry sense of humor. “You better take care of yourself so you can meet the shipment, dude.”

“I’ll be fine,” Hakkai said, a little more firmly than before. “There are others worse off than myself.”

“Opus is on transcom band-freq four-four-two-gamma-twelve. Call ‘em or have your government guys call. They said they’d be there in — hey, their ETA is only about twenty hours from now. What’s your local time?”

“Ah. Er …” There was a pause, and Gojyo pictured Hakkai looking for a chrono-display, and then realized he didn’t have any idea what Hakkai looked like. He hadn’t been in any of their databanks. Gojyo only had an idea of a vague, thin blur. An injured blur.

“Sixteen-thirty,” Hakkai eventually answered.

“Oh, you’re only a coupla hours off us. Hey — do you have viz-hookup capability?” Gojyo really wanted to see Hakkai. He liked the way Hakkai had said his name — they way he’d sounded so hopeful. He wanted to see if Hakkai was really as okay as he said he was.

“I fear not. Only for local transmissions.”

“Oh.”

“Thank you for your help, Gojyo, and the _nnngh_ — news. I believe I had better go.”

“Hey! Hey. You all right?” Gojyo yelled into the comm. Hakkai’s voice had seemed to become nearly a whisper.

“I have to call — thank you—”

“Hey! Take care of yourself, Hakkai — I mean, Mister Cho!”

The familiar sound of the door sliding open interrupted him, but it was only Goku bouncing in with some new vegetables.

“Good — _nngh_ — bye,” they heard, and then a crackle that signified the end of the trans.

“Hey!” Gojyo said to the dead comm.

“Poor guy. You better tell Sanzo,” Goku said after a few moments.

“I’ll tell the _captain_ in my own time, ya little ape,” Gojyo snapped. When Goku’s eyes narrowed, Gojyo realized he was letting his worry make him into an asshole. “Fine! Don’t look at me like that! I’ll tell ‘im. Now! I’m telling ‘im now.”

Goku sat in the copilot’s chair with his arms crossed and a lapful of what looked like turnips while Gojyo buzzed Sanzo on his office-cabin comm. When Gojyo told Sanzo what was up, he only grunted and said that their clients had better not all be fucking dead when they got there, or they’d see a fucking war, and that was the fucking truth.

Gojyo didn’t want them to be dead, either. All that shift he kept the freq locked, but heard nothing. When it was Sanzo’s dogwatch at the helm, Gojyo sat with Goku in the galley and ate Goku’s turnips or whatever and chain-smoked and got bitched at by Sanzo for running the galley’s vent-system on constant. Gojyo knew he was wasting fuel, but he didn’t care. He did care that he was gonna run out of cigarettes soon and hoped they sold them on Huian: a lot of these new colonies had gone smoke-free. Every planet in the galaxy had tried to go smoke-free at least once, but it had never stuck for long. Nicotine as a drug habit was less problematic than some of the crazy shit the giant pharma-corps had developed over the years.

Eventually Sanzo cut his own four-hour watch short at three hours and let Gojyo get back in the cockpit. And at night, Gojyo slung a hammock in the cockpit and kept the freq-lock on during his sleep-shift, even though he wasn’t sleeping, because he figured it was more important to keep tabs on injured clients than to route the usual corporate- and government-bullshit comm-traffic.

When he didn’t hear back from Hakkai at the same time he’d called the two day-shifts before, Gojyo called him. He didn’t get an answer, so he transed again an hour later, and then an hour after that.

It was costing money, transing out like that, and it wasn’t his place to call clients directly. But Gojyo didn’t care. He had a feeling of dread about not hearing from Hakkai. Hakkai, from what little he knew, didn’t seem like the type to let people know he was injured. Hell, he was the kind of guy who didn’t want to sound tired. He must be hurt really badly, to have been desperate like that. To have called Gojyo for help.

The comm wasn’t dead, of course. Not Gojyo’s comm. Enough business trans-traffic got through that they got good news from elsewhere: they already had a couple of jobs for the trip home, to double their use and money on the fuel. That put Sanzo in a good mood, good enough that he told Gojyo he could make two — only two — comm-trans per shift to Huian, if he wanted.

Gojyo wanted. Huian Board-Legis said they’d been trying to contact Mister Cho as well, but that power problems in the outlying regions were still an issue, and they were dealing with their own troubles, thank you.

The silence on the other end of Hakkai’s comm took a toll on Gojyo’s stretched nerves. He had to sleep eventually if he wanted to keep the _Dragon_ flying. He had to remind himself that it was an ugly galaxy for colonization, and since Hakkai was head of a terraforming partnership, he could probably take care of himself. Gojyo hoped.

Still he tried. And after three days, one of Gojyo’s hails got through. He was on sleep-shift, not sleeping, and Hakkai answered him on the first hail.

“ _Nnngh_. Is that Gojyo? My, it’s dark,” Hakkai said, his voice trickling through on the trans. Gojyo could have whooped for joy, but he didn’t.

“You alive there, man?”

“Ah hah hah,” Hakkai laughed weakly. “It appears I am still alive, after all.”

Gojyo wondered if that meant Hakkai had actually been planning to die. “Stay that way, man. I hear the meds got there. Didja get yours?”

“Oh, I hadn’t — oh, that’s good news. It seems … well, I will contact headquarters. Thank you.”

Gojyo wasn’t letting him go that easily. “And I’ll call you back. To be sure you got through. Okay?”

“You don’t have to. Er.” The sound of a thump transmitted loudly over the comm-link, and then what sounded like a laugh from Hakkai. “Yes, actually. Yes. I think I would appreciate that. And I think you must be an exceptional person, Gojyo.”

“Awww. I’m not exceptional. I’m just a haul-pilot.” Gojyo felt his cheeks fry up in a blush and was glad they didn’t have a viz-trans so Hakkai couldn’t see it. His face was probably redder than his hair. He hadn’t blushed, that he knew of, in fifteen years. “Talk to you in ten.”

The comm clicked off. Gojyo punched on the vent and smoked a cigarette, slowly and deliberately. He looked out of the cockpit shield at the stars. It was something he rarely did because there was usually nothing to see. Space was an empty goddamned place, and instruments took care of everything. But this time he found Altair with his naked eyes. It was huge compared to the other stars since they were only a week’s travel away. He wondered how he’d missed the stupid thing, hanging there all bright and white-blue in the speckled black empty. Then he looked a few degrees off, trying to find the Huian star hunched only a light-year or so next to it, trying to visualize its system and its fourth planet, and on that the dark half where Hakkai was maybe crawling through his place, trying to find a light or a bandage or a NichePad with the Legis freq numbers scrawled on it.

Gojyo called back in exactly ten, and Hakkai answered.

“Hello again, Gojyo.” Hakkai’s voice was less slurry than before, small but nearly as clear as the first time Gojyo had heard it. Gojyo was still looking at the stars — he was sure he’d found Huian on his own — and he had a surreal feeling, like Hakkai’s voice was coming through the black to his ears and bypassing trans-wormholes and electronics altogether. He liked the thought of that.

“Are they gonna help you out?”

“Hmm. Truthfully, the wound has almost — well. Let’s just say, I slept a very long time and feel much better. I think I needed the rest.”

“I know how you feel,” said Gojyo, who had barely slept for three days.

“I certainly hope not. I do believe I could eat, though. Will you talk to me for a few minutes while I get the ZipCooker going? Tell me about what you do.”

“Uhh. ‘K,” Gojyo said, blushing again, though he didn’t know why for sure. He supposed it might have something to do with someone like Hakkai wanting to hear him talk.

“Where are you from?” Hakkai asked, amid the sound of background clicks and whirrs. “I was trying to place your accent.”

“Oh, offa Vega,” Gojyo said. “New Saturn Epsilon.”

“That’s very far from here.”

“Good,” Gojyo said.

“Do you not want to talk about it? Am I imposing?” Hakkai asked. He actually sounded concerned, too. For Gojyo.

Gojyo sighed. “Nah, that’s okay. I just … It wasn’t a bad place to grow up, but I wanted to be gone, you know?”

He told Hakkai about how he’d grown up in a seventh-generation tee-forming family on a shithole planet that was a dozen light-years from anywhere. He’d never been a very good farmer, though he’d been pretty good at fixing equipment. As soon as he’d learned to walk, he’d haunted shipshops and the dock districts in what counted for New Saturn Epsilon’s cities, learning ship-maint and building. And planning how to get out.

He’d gone out, and out, and had never stopped. He’d ended up spending more than half his life cruising the spacelanes just to deliver ag and tech equipment to some of the emptiest corners of the known galaxy. That was the way of the universe, of life, over and over: some people stopped farming and built and flew ships, and others used the ships to colonize new places for farming or for building more things. Sometimes people — or companies — fought over who was going to do what. And Galcorp condoned and half-assedly oversaw the whole mess, controlling the money and the military.

“Me doing this. It just sort of happened, you know?” he asked Hakkai, when he realized he’d been yakking up a streak to silence on the other end of the trans.

“Mmm-hmm,” Hakkai answered after a moment, still there. It sounded like he was eating. “So you don’t like farming.”

“Uh,” Gojyo said, realizing that Hakkai was maybe like his own ancestors, one of those tee-formers that didn’t just change the land but stayed on and worked it. He didn’t know for sure, because Hakkai hadn’t talked about himself at all. “I don’t hate farmers. I just don’t much like me farming.”

“I suppose I’ll find out whether I like it or not. Oh, it sounds as though my official visitors have arrived.”

“Huh?” Gojyo said, but Hakkai didn’t answer right away. So Gojyo turned up the comm volume. He heard what sounded like the hum of a transport in the background. When Hakkai’s voice returned to the transmission, it filled the cockpit and echoed off the bulkheads.

“The legislators are here, and they have some supplies, I believe. I should go. Thank you for talking, Gojyo.”

“Uh, sure,” Gojyo said. He wanted to ask Hakkai to call back, but he felt stupid all of a sudden. He’d talked like some kind of moron, and Hakkai was a paying customer — a _rich_ paying customer — not just a guy like he’d hang with or one of his fucks.

But Hakkai surprised him again by beating him to it. “I promise to check in,” he said.

“Damn straight,” Gojyo told him, and signed off.

He smiled as he re-slung his hammock. At last he slept, at least until he dreamed that he was fucking a voice in the black empty, a voice that tried to fill it. He woke up with a boner like Olympus Mons and looked out at the stars, and ran his fingers in a vee over the outline of his cock through his denim work-pants. And the voice echoed through his mind and fingers and _fuck_ , it was intense, his own touch rough, his body sinking into space like plus-gravity, two- or three-gee. He was both asleep enough and awake enough to hear the voice in his head and feel his hand stroking his cock at the same time, and his huffing breath as he jerked himself became two breaths echoing in the cockpit. The hammock rocked, and all he could feel was the voice, hard on his skin. He came, yelling. He’d kicked the chair hard enough to roll it forward. He was alone in the cockpit, but _shit_ , he hoped he’d turned off the two-way. Then he fell back asleep.

***

Hakkai called back the next day, and the next, and the day after that. Gojyo came to expect his daily trans and to look forward to it — made it one of the little things he did, as easily he’d taken to maint or smoking or sex. As far as Captain Sanzo was concerned, Hakkai was just a client checking on the progress of his shipment, and Gojyo was just making sure that Hakkai was still alive. If Sanzo thought otherwise, he hadn’t said anything.

‘Cause mostly it seemed that Hakkai just called to talk. He didn’t offer too much about himself; they discussed Gojyo’s work or current events. Hakkai was something of a trans-addict and liked to listen to a little bit of everything from everywhere. His own equipment was better than what the Legis had, which was why they’d had him transing out for them. He seemed very interested in Gojyo’s personal boosts.

He did say he’d acquired a sort of contract to farm after he was done ‘forming; it was a pretty big-scale operation, too, and he was doing it mostly on his own. When he mentioned that he was fine with that because it was what she had wanted, Gojyo felt ballsy enough to ask who she was.

“Hmm,” Hakkai said, and Gojyo heard him take a breath. “Well, I don’t know if you know this, but I am the only partner in the Huian Delta Terraforming Cooperative Partnership GLP. My original — ah — partner, Kanan, wanted to found a colony. I was in — well, I agreed. But she was killed in a buyers’ war before we ever left the Core. Just over a year ago, in fact.”

“Aww, man,” Gojyo commiserated. “Lost that one, did ya?”

“No,” Hakkai said.

“Oh,” Gojyo said. Hakkai didn’t offer more, and Gojyo wasn’t about to nose his way into that whole story. Yet. Still, he was nosy. “If ya don’t mind me asking, what did you do before coming to colonize this place?”

“We’ll, it’s — _coff_ ,” Hakkai said. He coughed a couple more times and Gojyo got a little worried, but then he heard the sound of Hakkai swallowing something. Soon Hakkai started talking again. “I guess you could say I grew up sheltered under the umbrella of academia. When I met Kanan, I was on faculty at the university on Mars Colony Four. I taught pre-colonial literature.”

“Huh,” Gojyo said, laughing inwardly. His first guess had been right. “Thought you sounded like a smart one.”

“Ah hah hah. I suppose some might have thought so,” Hakkai laughed, and Gojyo thought it was real, not one of Hakkai’s _I’m being polite_ laughs. So Gojyo pushed it, because he was good at that.

“It wasn’t really you, though, was it?”

“Hmmm. It was a restrictive life,” Hakkai said, in a voice that was suddenly close and cozy sounding, a voice that oozed out of the stars. “I think that in addition to many other things, you are very perceptive, Gojyo.”

“Nah,” Gojyo said out of habit. _Shit_ , he wanted to fuck that voice. Or at least listen to it in a not-very-platonic way. The guy talked to him like he was a real person. Gojyo realized he didn’t even care at all what Hakkai looked like. “I was just paying attention, ‘cause I was interested.”

“Oh. People don’t usually find me interesting, I don’t think.”

“I dunno,” Gojyo said. “What you’re doing is pretty ballsy. And expensive.”

“Yes, it is.” Hakkai sighed, and his voice got low again. “I lived wisely, once upon a time. Now it’s what I must do. Kanan wanted — ah—”

“She wanted it, yeah,” Gojyo provided dutifully.

Hakkai sighed again. “I should sign off. I’m very tired, all of a sudden.”

“You okay?” Gojyo asked automatically.

“Yes — yes, I’m fine. I was very busy today, straightening my affairs. You are bringing a lot of work for me, after all.”

“Good tired.”

“Yes, good tired. Good evening, Gojyo. I very much look forward to meeting you in person. And thank you for caring.”

 _Could say the same to you_ , Gojyo thought, but didn’t say aloud. Soon the static of the broken trans connection made a reply unnecessary.

Gojyo leaned back and indulged his new hobby of looking at the stars and finding them incredibly sexy, when they had voices like that in them.

Gojyo knew he was perceptive, to a point: he’d learned to pay attention to people. What people were saying behind their words sometimes meant the difference between a win or a lose, or a fuck or a lonely night. Or life and death, even.

He wondered what this Kanan had been like and how much Hakkai had loved her, and how much her death haunted him. He wondered if Hakkai only liked women, though most people these days didn’t seem to care. He wondered if Hakkai really knew why he was doing such a crazy thing on his own. He knew two things for sure, however: one, that you didn’t terraform a quarter of a continent on a backwater planet all on your lonesome just ‘cause your dead girlfriend wanted you to. And two, Hakkai sounded amazing when he was good tired.

***

He didn’t get to hear Hakkai’s voice the next day-shift, though, because Sanzo kept Gojyo off the comm. In fact, he kicked him out of the cockpit during call-time, saying he needed to do his own business. And when he finally commed Gojyo out of the galley to come back, he seemed to have a nitromite up his ass.

He leaned against the door-track of the cockpit hatchway, half-in and half-out so that the door couldn’t shut. It _whoosh_ -whined at the obstruction, wanting to close. Sanzo ignored it and lit a cigarette. He looked at Gojyo with a weird expression.

“That Cho motherfucker is bad news,” he said after a bit.

“You talk to ‘im?” Gojyo asked.

“None of your fucking business,” Sanzo said. He smoked. The door grunted. Sanzo and Gojyo stared at each other.

“You’re gonna set off the smoke sensors,” Gojyo said. He leaned back against the bulkhead next to the door and shoved his hands into his coverall pockets.

“Then you’ll have to fucking shut them off, won’t you?”

Sure enough, a few seconds later the sensors caught the smoke and started _BEEP-BEEP-BEEEEP_ ing, their alarm growing louder and louder, the noise bouncing off the cargo and the walls and drowning out the sound of the door trying to shut.

“You gonna let me in to turn ‘em off?” Gojyo said.

Sanzo plucked his cigarette out of his mouth between two fingers, then shoved the fingers at Gojyo’s face, so close Gojyo could breathe the smoke. “I tell you this because I’m trying to help you out here, dumbass.”

“That’s awfully kind of ya, Sanzo,” Gojyo told him.

“That’s fucking _captain_ to you,” Sanzo said. He pushed up and off the door edge so it could slide shut with a relieved _swish_.

Goku had run up at the noise, and was looking between the two of them. “What’s happening? Why’re the alarms going off? Gojyo? Sanzo?”

“It’s fucking captain to you, too,” Sanzo said. He shoved his cigarette back into his mouth and stomped off, somehow still graceful as he navigated the narrow passage between the cargo and the bulkhead. “And cut the kid’s fucking hair, would you?” he tossed behind him.

“Sure thing, Captain Asshole,” Gojyo said to Sanzo’s back. He keyed himself into the cockpit and reached up to tap the alarm-kill code into the ceiling panel. When the flashing red indicators calmed to green, the alarms stopped screaming. Gojyo threw himself into his chair — still warm from Sanzo’s ass — and looked at the time. It was too late to trans Hakkai, or at least too late to do it decently. And Gojyo didn’t want to appear desperate or anything.

Or did he care? Hakkai had never seemed to. They were just talking, for fuck’s sake. Gojyo looked at the stars and tried to decide if he’d ever been decent, and if he wanted to start now. Before he’d decided, Goku _whooshed_ in and flopped into the copilot’s seat. He was quiet.

“Wanna haircut?” Gojyo asked eventually.

“I guess,” Goku shrugged. He still looked worried.

“Cool,” Gojyo said. He swiveled in his chair and poked the latch to open the lower wall storage-unit. He dug around inside it until he found the fine-thread laser-bore. Hakkai had won the buyer’s war that had killed his partner. He was some kind of badass, or at least someone who could afford to hire badasses. He worried Sanzo, who was one of the baddest asses Gojyo knew. Gojyo tuned the laze to three mils.

“Bend over, ape-boy,” he told Goku. Goku bent his head in Gojyo’s direction, and Gojyo started stretching out thick locks of his brown hair, slicing off four- and five-centimenter chunks. Goku’s hair was clean, Gojyo would give him that. For all the dirt and grease he dug in every day, he kept himself decent. “If you wanna watch next time, I do my own like this. You just haveta keep the pieces stretched even or you’ll look like a shaggy dipshit.”

“Uh-huh,” Goku said from upside-down.

Gojyo realized that he didn’t care what Hakkai’s problem was, though he clearly had one. Huian-Legis was obviously nervous about him, too. Gojyo still wanted to meet him. Just to see what … just to see. Gojyo had never really gotten to know someone before he met them, and sometimes not even after he’d met them. He’d never stuck around long enough. Haulers spent a lot of time mostly alone — it was part of the life. He wished Hakkai wasn’t so damned lonely.

“Sanzo doesn’t totally hate you, ya know. I think he wants to help,” Goku said. He was sliding his shoes back and forth through the hair coating the deck.

“That don’t mean he ain’t a dickhead,” Gojyo said. “And I ain’t totally stupid.”

Gojyo didn’t send any transmissions during the night. He didn’t expect Hakkai would, either, after dealing with Sanzo. So he was surprised when Hakkai transed in the next day. He was quiet and brief. He couldn’t talk long, he said, because he was busy with preparations.

“But I just wanted to quickly say hello. To let you know I was still here,” Hakkai said.

“I didn’t think you wouldn’t be, but thanks,” Gojyo said. He was stupid, totally stupid, ‘cause his heart felt like it jumped back and forth from his stomach to his throat when he heard Hakkai’s voice. He was totally falling for a guy he’d never seen. It must be what happened when you got to know people by actually talking to them.

Gojyo tried to forget that feeling, but when Hakkai called the next day and said pretty much the same thing, Gojyo felt like he had the galaxy whirling inside him. He didn’t want it to be like that, but it was, and there was nothing he could do about it. He wondered if, when this delivery was all over, he’d ever feel that excited about anything again. He certainly hoped so. Or hoped not. He couldn’t decide.

But on the day they were scheduled to land, he didn’t hear from Hakkai at all. Not even when they were in orbit, making preps and waiting for Sanzo to give the word. Sanzo had tried to trans down-planet once and had said to fuck it after that; they had the landing instructions and regs from weeks ago, and as far as they knew those hadn’t changed. The land-and-unload point was on the M-D Co-op property. They wouldn’t even have to hire RG-line trucks to make a drive — all Goku would have to do was operate the hover-skids to move the haul from the hold to a warehouse on-site.

Goku also had to deliver the invoice. Sanzo had given the Nichechip to him instead of Gojyo, making a point that was asshole-ishly obvious.

“I suggest you stay with the _Dragon_ ,” Sanzo said when Gojyo confronted him in his cabin. He was wearing his brown grubbies but packing a bag with his good white shirt. He was also packing his piece and ammo, that old-timey projectile shit his gun fired. “Get her ready to go. I got fucking schmooze-meetings with Huian-Legis at the capital, and I don’t want to hang around when they’re over.”

Gojyo snorted and tried not to think about punching his boss. “You know the ship’ll be ready soon as we unload. When’s she ever not been?”

“I could make it an order,” Sanzo said with another of his new, weird looks. He was patting his pockets as if to be sure he had everything all tucked away right and tight.

“Fuck that. I always help with the unloads,” Gojyo told him. Sanzo would never order him; Goku might need help.

“Your ass, then.”

“Or someone else’s, maybe,” Gojyo said, and waggled his eyebrows. He was just pissed off enough to do it and not care, and maybe past that pissed off.

Sanzo looked like he might want to punch something, too, but he only shoved his way past Gojyo out of the office. “Just land the fucking ship,” he said.

“Pick me up some smokes at the capital, then, would you, Cap’n? Since I’m too delicate to do my own goddamned job?”

Sanzo only grunted and walked off into the hold to wait in the seats by the doors.

Gojyo headed off to the cockpit at a jog. Sanzo had given the word, anyway, and Gojyo wanted to land as much as anyone else. When he passed Goku, who was bent over a crate and shoving something green and disgusting-looking into his pockets, Gojyo grabbed his collar and dragged Goku with him.

“Gotta get strapped in.”

***The landing went as normally as most landings went. Gojyo gave the job a little more excitement by using manual-viz for half the navigation, looking out the cockpit view-shield at the landing site. He was half-trying to see the coord-lines and half-looking for people. For Hakkai. Sanzo would never know the difference in the landing, though Goku hollered at him a few times when he thought they were going to hit something. Like Gojyo would; he’d never hit anything. He was that good.

In fact, he’d powered the _Dragon_ down as they’d landed, timing the sequence so perfectly that he didn’t even have to do an exhaust-check before they exited. He hit the code sequence to depressurize and open the cargo bay doors, and both he and Goku unstrapped from their seats and ran out — Goku because he was still new to long-haul deliveries and excited to see new places, and Gojyo because he was still new to meeting someone he wanted to meet.

They were both disappointed outside the doors, however. There was nothing to see and nobody to meet, only the grey crete-steel of the landing pad and grey buildings of different heights surrounding it. The _Dragon_ was a good-sized ship, and she’d clapped through several sound-barriers on the way down. It wasn’t like nobody knew they were there.

“The fuck?” Sanzo was saying to the empty dock. He turned to look at Gojyo. “See you decided to come out, dumbass.”

A sudden low humming noise filled the air. It echoed off the buildings so that Gojyo couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but soon they all saw a car gliding to a stop a dozen or so meters away.

“Is that our client?” Goku asked. “Mister Cho?”

“No, that’s my ride. Dammit.” Sanzo shouldered his bag and walked off across the landing pad.

Gojyo looked up at the _Dragon_ , at least at as much as he could see of her from his current angle. Normally he would take just such a chance to give the girl a good looking-over, to see if she’d picked up any scars or debris the sensors hadn’t detected. Instead, he looked back down and around the landing-pad. There was no movement except for the ZipCar with gov-corp markings on its sides, speeding off with Sanzo inside. Goku and Gojyo were left alone with the cargo and the crete-steel. Gojyo stamped his feet a couple of times, getting used to real ground gravity again.

“The air feels funny,” Goku said.

“It’s heavier than Earth-normal,” Gojyo told him, taking a sniff of the spring-warm atmosphere. He pulled out his lighter and gave it an experimental flick. When the air around them didn’t explode, he lit a cigarette. “Regular old Nitro-Oxy, though. You’ll miss it when we leave.”

Gojyo figured the Board-Legis — or Hakkai — planned to change the air quality with some of the equipment they’d bought. Apparently Huian had been terraformed once, by a radical free-thought group that wanted to go corp-free and sovereign. They’d been big on ideas but short on terraforming know-how, and that was why the new group — Hakkai — was going to have to start over. If Hakkai would ever show up, that was.

“The specs said everything could be run auto,” Goku said after a while, pointing at some hoverskids poking out of what looked like a garage on one of the buildings. “Guess I can just get started.”

“You do that,” Gojyo said. He stamped out his smoke and ran back up the ramp, through the maze of ag-haul and back into the cockpit, to run the area schematics Sanzo had unlocked for him the day before. He found what looked like a living area, not far from where Goku had seen the skids. He ran back outside.

“I’ll be close by. I’m looking for the client. Buzz me if you have any trouble,” he told Goku as he passed him.

“Sure,” Goku said. Gojyo couldn’t tell if he’d said it in a normal way or a way that said he knew what Gojyo was doing and what he was really looking for. Gojyo decided not to ask, just to look.

Gojyo exited the warehouse on the back end to discover a little pool-garden, encircled with painted stone and organic fixtures. It would be real pretty once it had plants in it. On one side of the area stood a transparent enviro-bubble, filled already with growing things. Crete steps, a warmer brown than the grey of the landing area, led down to a glass door into what was clearly a living area.

Gojyo tapped on the door, and the _tong_ ing sound it made told him it wasn’t really glass but diamond view-plate, space-grade. It was a smart choice for a corporate buyer making a hostile deal.

Nobody answered his _tong_ , so Gojyo tried the door-panel. It was unlocked, which was not so smart. Inside someone had created a cozy, clean room, with tile floors and real wooden furniture. The air there was already conditioned to Earth-normal.

“Yo?” Gojyo called out in as friendly a voice as he had. “It’s Gojyo Sha from ATI — sweet place ya got here.”

There was still no answer. Gojyo walked further in, keeping his hands up and un-threatening when he saw the security screen recording his entry. He looked down and saw red splotches and smears on the tile floor. Dark red, like old blood. He thought it weird that someone like Hakkai would leave that lying around all unhygienic …

“Yo!” he called again. He followed the trail of dried red, which led down a hallway to a blue-painted door. He reached out to knock, but the door slid open automatically at his movement.

A cloud of something warm rolled out of the room, and it took Gojyo a second to realize it was steam. He was in the bathroom, and a dude was in the bath. A red bath.

“Uh. Hi?” Gojyo said, and stepped forward to have a look. The guy had to be Hakkai. Most of him was submerged in the red water, but what Gojyo could see was thin. Thin and gorgeous. He had a thin nose, thin strands of nearly black hair glued to his forehead, and a thin line of stitches holding one of his eyes shut. The other was shut all on its own. _Is he dead?_ But it looked like the guy was breathing. The red water was lapping slightly at his shoulders. Gojyo poked him on the top of his head.

“Dude, that’s a lot of blood ya got there,” he said.

“That’s the panirynol in the water,” the guy mumbled in Hakkai’s voice.

“Sweet!” Gojyo said, smiling so hugely he thought his face might freeze that way. “You’re alive.”

“Still, I see,” Hakkai said. He opened the eye that wasn’t sewn shut. It was clear and green. If Gojyo hadn’t already been in love, that would have done it.

“Goddamn, you’re gorgeous,” Gojyo admitted, before he could stop himself.

Hakkai looked at him for a second longer and then closed the eye. “I could say the same. I should never have contacted you again this morning. Or yesterday.”

“Man, don’t worry. I’m just here to unload your stuff,” Gojyo said, more than a little disappointed. He backed off as Hakkai sat up straight and reached for a — Spex-lens, Gojyo thought it was called. They’d been a fashion trend a couple of decades back. “And you didn’t call today. It was yesterday. How long you been in the bath?”

“Oh? Ah hah hah,” Hakkai said, and plopped the Spex-lens over his nose. He stood, naked and dripping panirynol-tinted water, and Gojyo would have checked him out in all the right places, but his gaze was drawn to the giant, ugly, barely closed wound on Hakkai’s stomach. Hakkai, meanwhile, was holding out his hands and looking at his fingers. “My wound reopened, but I think this bath should have finished most of the healing. Especially if I’ve been unconscious that long. I’m all wrinkled.”

“Looks like ya needed it,” Gojyo said. He grabbed a bathrobe from the wall-slot and held it out to Hakkai. “Sorry to barge into your bathroom, man. I was worried. Now I feel stupid.”

“Don’t,” Hakkai said in his quiet voice. He tied the robe around his waist and looked at Gojyo through one steam-smeared lens. “I appreciate you waking me up. And I appreciated all our conversations. I only fear being selfish, you see.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Gojyo said, even though he already sort of knew. He backed out the door, feeling his face grow warm. He hoped Hakkai would think it was caused by the steam and not that Gojyo was dying of heart-thumping lust, which he nearly was.

Hakkai followed Gojyo into the hallway. His lenses cleared in the non-steamy air so that Gojyo was hit with the full force of one fantastically green eye. “Because I must learn to live alone. I’ve learned to tend my own injuries, at least. But getting to know you has only made that more difficult for me. You shall have to leave, after all. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“What, before I scream on outta here?” Gojyo said, then laughed. Somehow, being here in Hakkai’s space, with Hakkai, had accelerated things to the point where they were reading each other’s minds. Gojyo wasn’t the only one who was perceptive. And Hakkai had tended his own injuries? Gojyo wasn’t surprised, though the thought of Hakkai sewing his own eyelid shut was pretty fucked up. “Yeah, tea sounds good. And we’ll just cool it, I guess?”

“We’ll do what we have to do,” Hakkai said. He looked down at the red-smeared tile and grimaced. Then he headed down the hall and through the room that led to the pool-garden, then down a few steps into a wooden-beamed kitchen. He poked a few buttons in his kitchen power-panel. Somewhere on the counters an autosteamer started humming and hissing. Hakkai unlatched a door-panel and pulled out a couple of cups.

Guilty memory hit Gojyo. “Uh, can you make three? I got a kid back at the dock who’ll want some. We don’t keep it on board.”

“I’m happy to. And you’ve reminded me that I have work to do.” Hakkai pulled out a third cup, and then excused himself to get dressed.

Gojyo looked around the kitchen and around the home, thinking that it wouldn’t be a bad place to be, if someone had to be ‘forming and farming. He’d run away from land-bound living spaces, and it had taken him years in space to realize that those things could be appreciated.

Normally, that kind of appreciation would be done from a _get in, get laid, get out_ perspective, but now he wasn’t so sure that was the best way. He’d planned to settle down at some point, of course, in the distant future. But thinking about Hakkai, and seeing Hakkai all dressed in clothes that looked great but should never be worn to unload equipment, made him sort of want to snuggle in and never get up again. He had it bad — really bad, all right.

Back at the docks, Goku had already cleared out a dozen meters of hold-space. Whatever Sanzo was paying him, he should double it.

“Hi, Mister Cho,” Goku called from behind the controls of a hover-skid. “You got nice equipment! And the organics are awesome! Wait’ll you see ‘em.”

Hakkai smiled at Goku, and Gojyo felt his knees go weak.

“I look forward to it. I’ll have to keep them out of this atmosphere for a while, though,” Hakkai said.

Goku unloaded his skid in record time when he saw Gojyo had something for him. He ran over, and Gojyo shoved a cup of tea at him.

“Ape! Why don’tcha take Mister Cho to see the enviro-rooms now? I’ll take care of some of this,” Gojyo suggested. He wanted a few minutes alone. To settle down, to not be such a pathetic asshole. Or to jerk off, maybe.

When they left, Gojyo decided that hard work would probably be the best medicine for what ailed him. Hakkai was right; he’d have to leave, and soon. And Sanzo would kill his ass if he wasn’t ready when he had to be.

Goku and Hakkai were gone a long time. Gojyo would have had plenty of time to jerk off if he’d decided to do that first. But he’d just stopped loading to take a break when his pocket-comm beeped and fizzled at him. He pulled it off his coverall-belt and tried to answer the hail, but there was only static. Gojyo tried to key in to locate the last trans, but got nothing. It was probably a mishail; the _Dragon_ was right in front of him, and nobody had gone in or out except the three of them, so it couldn’t have been Goku. And Sanzo would have called the ship. Gojyo shrugged and downed the second half of his cold tea, then went back to work.

A few minutes later, Goku came running out of the hold and into the warehouse. He was breathless.

“Sanzo’s in trouble! Gotta go.” Goku took off sprinting in a random direction, then ran back and looked at Gojyo in confusion. “Someone’s gotta unload! Someone’s gotta watch the _Dragon_! How’m I gonna get there?”

Hakkai came jogging in after Goku. He was holding his side, Gojyo noticed. “Your captain contacted us when we were inside,” he explained. “Apparently there’s been a small attack on the capital. He did say he wanted you two to ‘fucking finish.’ He said he could handle it.”

Gojyo had no doubts about Sanzo’s ability to do just that, but Goku was clutching Gojyo’s arm, hard, digging in with his fingers.

“You gotta stay with the ship! I can go help,” he pleaded. “You have a transport, Mister Cho?”

Hakkai nodded. He pulled a card out of his pocket-case and handed it to Goku. “There’s a small car in that hangar over there,” he said, and pointed off to the left.

“Thanks! Oh, here.” Goku pressed a chip into Hakkai’s hand. As Goku sprinted off again, Hakkai held the chip up at Gojyo with a raised eyebrow.

“The invoice,” Gojyo said.

“Ah. And do you want to go help your captain, too?”

“Eh.” Gojyo supposed he should, but Sanzo — and Goku — were right: someone needed to secure the ship. She was valuable and would be vulnerable if another buyers’ war made its way to their location. And Gojyo couldn’t think of a single damned thing that Sanzo and Goku, together, couldn’t take care of.

“I assume they’ll be fine?” Hakkai said before Gojyo answered, reading his mind — or his expression.

“Yup,” Gojyo said.

“Ah hah hah. So what would you like me to do?”

Gojyo looked at Hakkai’s nice clothes, at the way Hakkai was leaning to the side just a bit, favoring his injured half. Then he thought of Hakkai sewing his own eye shut and tossing himself into a panirynol bath for two days.

“Wanna take care of the organics? You’ll know how to set the systems.”

“Good idea. Ah — I should mention. Or perhaps I shouldn’t, but then I feel too comfortable with you.” Hakkai stepped closer as he talked, until he and Gojyo were only inches apart. He continued in his low, serious voice. “If your captain is involved in what I fear may have happened, then I, and thus possibly your ship, may be targets. I have — she has — enemies. I’d thought that I — or she — had taken care of the issue, but it seems I was mistaken.”

Gojyo tried to process, then spoke instead.

“Er. I thought she was already — uh—” Gojyo stopped at Hakkai’s wince, embarrassed to bring up that kind of pain.

Hakkai shook his head once. “Another she. One I’m not as — ah — close to. What will it take to make your ship secure?”

Gojyo looked at the _Dragon_ , half-unloaded. “We’ll have to finish this, definitely. Organics first. After we’ve transferred all the cargo, the _Dragon_ ’s got systems that’ll hold off a hell of a lot. I made sure of that. And dude — you’re gonna have to tell me the whole story, sometime.”

“Sometime, perhaps,” Hakkai said, looking wistful for a second before he jogged off toward the ship.

***

They had at least four hours of work ahead of them, and Gojyo worried that it’d take them six without Goku. But Hakkai kept up his share of the work, and they unloaded at a good clip. Hakkai handled the plants and Gojyo ran the hoverskid, getting the equip. Now and then Gojyo checked the cockpit messages, even though he’d set the outgoing transcomm to his pocket-comm freq, just to see if Goku or Sanzo had called but couldn’t get through. They hadn’t.

Gojyo only took real breaks when it looked like Hakkai was going to collapse for sure, but that was only twice. On one break, Goku transed in to say he’d found the city. Apparently that had been hard to do, because the city was small and the surrounding countryside was full of nothing.

They chatted while they worked, like they’d gotten used to chatting. Hakkai didn’t tell Gojyo the whole story, but did tell him about the land. The water was good and the air was breathable; it only needed the right soil treatments and vegetation in the right places to clear it up in Hakkai’s valley. Doing it alone wouldn’t be impossible, but it wouldn’t be easy.

The giant — and expensive — Agri-Trax-Four that the _Dragon_ had hauled out here would do a lot of the work, Gojyo knew. It would chem the soil and drop plant-seeds, given a skilled driver. Gojyo had grown up around them and knew them inside-out. He drove Hakkai’s down the ramp and into the warehouse, teaching him some of the controls.

“I’ve read the instruction manuals, but that’s it,” Hakkai admitted, seeming to stare at Gojyo rather than at the controls. “And I’ve read about Saturn Epsilon Four, in case you wondered.”

“Oh,” Gojyo said, realizing at last that Hakkai was staring at his hair. Enough generations eating food grown in the right cocktail of chemicals had tweaked the genes of Gojyo’s ancestors. “Heh. In my blood, you know. ‘S the color of dirt, right? Red dirt. Looks pretty nuts from space, in the right orbit.”

“It’s … very attractive on you,” Hakkai said.

“Uh,” Gojyo said, and punched the controls for _park_ slowly and deliberately, even though Hakkai wasn’t looking at his hands. He only hoped Hakkai wasn’t looking at his crotch. “Read a lot, do you?”

Hakkai sighed and unlatched the door. “Not anymore, I won’t. I’ll be learning to _do_. Like you have.”

“Won’t get rich like that,” Gojyo said, opening his own door.

“You certainly don’t do it by teaching,” Hakkai said from the other side of the vehicle as he climbed out. “You have to kill the right people in the right circumstances, it seems. Their property doesn’t even go through probate if you can prove deal-breaking or revenge.”

Gojyo met Hakkai in front of the A-Trax and stared at him. “Dude — Hakkai — that is seriously messed up. Just saying shit like that, all of a sudden. You know that?”

“Does it bother you?” Hakkai asked, stepping closer.

Gojyo thought about it. It didn’t, really. But it didn’t matter whether it bothered him or not, in the end, and he wasn’t sure how to say that without saying it in those words. He was saved from having to try by the _fizz-beep_ of his pocket-comm.

“Gojyo! Gojyo! I found Sanzo. You there?”

“Yeah.” Gojyo whipped out the comm and looked at it. There was no viz, but the sound was clear. He could clearly hear lasers being fired and the distinctive _boom-ping_ of Sanzo’s projectile gun.

“We’re holed up. We can’t drive out yet, but we will. You should—”

“Take care of my fucking ship, you hear me?” Sanzo’s voice cut in.

“Aye-aye,” Gojyo said. He looked up at Hakkai, who had a strange expression on his face. Gojyo somehow felt guilted into adding, “Take care of yourselves.”

“Whoever you are, get away from my fucking ship,” Sanzo said, and with a _fitz_ , the transmission ended.

Hakkai was still looking at him. “You are all so very, ah, unique,” he said. “But you know what you’re doing, where you’re going. I’m envious.”

Gojyo was a simple guy. He was getting a little frustrated at all the mystery and guilt. Hakkai seemed to want to be lonely. “You know, dude, whatever happened to you, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. The mega-corps are bastards, but it’s still a free—” He stopped talking when Hakkai touched his arm because suddenly his heart was lodged in his throat, blocking the words.

“Not for everyone. I wish I could explain why. Maybe I will.”

“Sometime,” Gojyo said. He looked at Hakkai, looking back at him. Hakkai’s black hair was sweaty and sticking up in weird directions. He looked hot. They had work to do. Gojyo sighed. “We’d better finish. One more load each oughta do it, you think?”

Hakkai agreed quietly. Half an hour later, they were done unloading. Fifteen minutes after that, they’d locked the warehouse and Hakkai had set its security systems. Next up was the _Dragon_ , but Gojyo had a dilemma: did he lock her up from the inside, or the outside?

Hakkai answered the question for him with his spooky mind-reading powers. “Must you stay with your ship? Because my home contains a hub for all of the security and camera systems on this dock. It would be a good place to dig in and from which to monitor the situation.”

Gojyo grinned. “Sounds good.”

Hakkai’s eyebrows rose. “Oh. Somehow, I thought you’d put up more of a fight.”

Gojyo felt his cheeks heat again. Hakkai had that kind of power over him — Gojyo, the former sexiest man in the universe. He patted the _Dragon_ ’s hull to distract them both. “I told you, I build good systems. Anything she can’t handle, I sure as hell couldn’t. It’ll take a few minutes to set ‘er up, though.”

“Do what you have to.” Hakkai looked away, up at the stars that were just peeping out in the twilight. “I’ll go get started. And I think I should make us something to eat. I haven’t eaten in two days, after all.”

He headed off towards his house, looking up as he walked instead of looking where he was going. Gojyo looked up, too, and felt a little wobbly at the sudden static perspective on the universe. Everything was wonky from down here, and with no astrometric instruments on hand, he couldn’t even have named any of the stars, not even any of his own. And Altair was on day-side.

Gojyo had used to read stuff, when he’d been made to. He’d read that people long ago had named Altair, had thought it was separated from Vega by the Milky Way. It wasn’t, though; it’d just looked that way from old Earth.

Gojyo shook his head at himself and jumped onto the ramp to make one last trip into the _Dragon_ , to get his beam-pistol out of the arms-locker. He was glad, not for the first time, to have a real gun and not a stupid pebble-shooter like Sanzo carried. On impulse he jumped in for a two-minute shower. He wondered if Goku was having a hell of a good time fighting, whoever they were fighting, alongside Sanzo. Goku longed for adventure; on this trip he’d gotten some.

Gojyo closed up the ship and tapped his personal codes into her bay-door panel. Then he programmed a special warning message for Sanzo in case he showed back up before Gojyo did; the asshole may have been the captain, but Gojyo knew the ship and her defenses better than anybody. Then he headed for Hakkai’s place.

He had to go around the locked warehouse to get in through the garden. As he neared a dark, little side-pathway, he could hear a rough voice that wasn’t Hakkai’s, talking shit.

“Can’t believe I actually got you now, you bastard,” the voice said.

Gojyo slunk along the walls, tiptoeing towards the sound of the voice, checking behind him to be sure he wasn’t being followed. He rounded into the garden and saw them, standing in the open doorway — Hakkai and a stranger, their backs to Gojyo. The guy was a big one, taller even than Hakkai, who was nearly Gojyo’s height. The guy was definitely beefier. He had one thick arm around Hakkai’s shoulders and had wrenched Hakkai’s arms behind his back.

“If I’d had both my eyes, I suppose I would have seen you there and been able to kill you,” Gojyo heard Hakkai say.

“I coulda lazed you where you stood, smartass,” the guy holding him said. He wrenched Hakkai’s arms more roughly behind his back until Hakkai grunted. “But I wanna kill you up close and personal, like you did my associates. My hands, and a knife.”

“Ah,” Hakkai said, sounding bored.

That was when Gojyo saw the knife the guy was talking about, glinting in the dim light of the garden. It was pressed against Hakkai’s throat. The guy wasn’t doing much killing, though, just yapping. “Heh. Can you believe my buddies taking care of your friends in the city said you weren’t worth it? I think you are. Worth dying slowly. And painfully.”

Gojyo rolled his eyes. _What an asshole_. Gojyo lifted his beam-pistol and took aim.

“Duck, Hakkai,” he said. Hakkai ducked, and Gojyo fired.

“What?” the asshole blurted and started to turn his head. That was why Gojyo’s laser-shot sliced him in the side of the throat instead of the back, and why there was more blood involved than Gojyo had planned.

Hakkai turned and watched his attacker fall off of him, gurgling and spurting blood. The guy dropped his knife to try and grab the wound on his throat, but it wasn’t gonna do him any good. Gojyo shot him again in the head, just to put him out of his misery.

Hakkai looked down at the body for a silent few moments. Then he said, in a thoughtful voice, “Now, this one is tricky. He clearly wanted revenge. But you’re the one who killed him, and his revenge was not focused upon you. This looks like a case for the probate courts to decide.”

“Dude, you are so fucked up,” Gojyo said.

Hakkai straightened his Spex-lens and rubbed his upper arms. His smile was a little crazy-looking. “My, how squeamish you are, Gojyo. I’m surprised.”

“Aw, man. Does that mean this won’t work?” Gojyo laughed. He stepped over the dead body and stood right in front of Hakkai, real close, closer than he’d dared to before. With half-jerking motions that probably looked like he was trying to stop himself — and he was, a little — Gojyo reached out and touched Hakkai’s bicep. Hakkai just looked at him, not saying anything. Gojyo could feel Hakkai’s tension through his fingers.

“You okay, man?” Gojyo asked — whispered.

“Yes, I—” Hakkai began, then just stared at Gojyo for a few seconds, his one good eye seeming to burn a conduit into Gojyo’s brain. Then he said, “Oh, fine,” and grabbed the sides of Gojyo’s face and kissed him.

Even though Gojyo had practically been begging for it, Hakkai’s mouth was so hot and quick and hard that Gojyo just stood there like a dumbass for a couple of seconds. Then adrenaline kicked him in the balls and he caught up, opening his mouth and kissing Hakkai back.

He clutched Hakkai’s sides through his sweater. It was good, real good, and Gojyo didn’t know if it was because it’d been a while or because it was _Hakkai_. The voice in the stars, real under his fingertips. The hot breath in his mouth.

In a moment of stupid panic Gojyo stumbled backwards. He tripped over the dead dude and snapped the two of them out of their clinch.

Hakkai lowered his hands and stared at Gojyo. Gojyo stared back. Hakkai backed off first — not a surprise. His lenses were all skewed.

“Pardon. It seems I was overcome,” he said, his one good eyed unreadable in a flash of light off his lens.

Gojyo felt his limbs go limp. He wanted to say, _well, fuck you, too_. But just ‘cause he was pissed off didn’t mean he didn’t still want the guy. So instead he said, “Me too, I guess.”

Hakkai straightened his lenses and looked around. “We should get inside. I need to cook something.”

“Uh. Okay.” Gojyo shook his fingers out, then rubbed his stomach. Hakkai had been warm. Warm and thin and taut and fucking bizarre. Not knowing what else to do, Gojyo kicked the blood-spattered body lying on the ground. “What do we do with him?”

“Leave him there as a warning,” Hakkai said. He keyed a code into the door-panel.

Gojyo followed him in, feeling numb and spacey, like the thick atmosphere was fogging his brain. He liked Hakkai, a lot, weirdness and all. But he was gonna have to leave sometime. He should leave sooner better than later. He wondered when the hell Sanzo and Goku were going to get back so they could get the hell out and Gojyo could go somewhere nice and pay for sex. Hakkai had been a good kisser.

He supposed he must have followed Hakkai into the kitchen, because suddenly they were there and Hakkai was taking something out of a white cooling unit and dropping it into a white ZipCooker on the grey counter. The room was totally clinical-looking. It didn’t seem like a very Hakkai room. Gojyo wondered when he’d decided he knew what and who Hakkai really was.

Gojyo felt his brain snap back into reality a bit. Hakkai liked him. Gojyo knew that. He leaned his butt against a white-topped table and watched Hakkai taking plates out of the cabinet. Hakkai was frowning a little.

“You know, man,” Gojyo started. Hakkai paused and was stared at him, the white light all weird and glinty on his lenses again. Gojyo swallowed. “I used ta think I was really sexy.”

Hakkai snorted. Gojyo gaped at him. Then, to make it worse, Hakkai snorted again and covered his mouth to try and hide it. When Gojyo glared, Hakkai waved his free hand at him.

“I’m sorry. You are. Very sexy.” He calmed his shit down into a regular smile. He sighed at Gojyo. “I keep doing that, don’t I? Being aggressive, then backing off.”

Gojyo crossed his arms. “Yeah, you do.”

Hakkai pushed his Spex up the bridge of his nose with one finger. “Does it annoy you?”

“Yeah,” Gojyo said, trying not to smile back.

“I should stop that.”

“Yeah.”

Hakkai rearranged the plates on the counter a millimeter or two. Then, with just as much precision, he walked the few steps over to Gojyo and laid his palm flat against Gojyo’s stomach. His fingers were long and deliberate.

Gojyo didn’t move, couldn’t breathe when Hakkai did that, or when he slid his fingers under Gojyo’s shirt. Gojyo closed his eyes and focused on the touch, warm fingers on his bare skin.

“Warm and real,” Hakkai whispered. “Though I do like your voice, Gojyo. I wanted to capture it and keep it.”

“Uh-huh.” A chill shuddered its way up every inch of Gojyo’s skin from his boots to his scalp, made worse by the sense of Hakkai’s body moving closer, his warm breath on Gojyo’s lips.

This time the kissing wasn’t so hard and sloppy, just nice and slow and breathy. Hakkai had a thing for his hair, Gojyo guessed; Hakkai shoved his fingers up under Gojyo’s hair-tie and held on as Gojyo kissed him back, licking the insides of Hakkai’s teeth. They made little, satisfied _hmms_ at each other. Somewhere, something mechanical hummed along with them.

Things didn’t stay so slow and easy, though. It was like a haul: long periods of calm and then shit happened all at once. Hakkai tried to pull Gojyo’s shirt off over his head at the same time Gojyo was trying to do the same to Hakkai’s sweater. He was doing the crappier job, running it hard up Hakkai’s sides ‘cause he didn’t want to let go.

Hakkai was thin but Gojyo could feel the taut strength in his body, muscles wrenched tight like ship conduits, nothing like he’d imagined a teacher-type to be. Neither was Hakkai’s thigh, shoved between Gojyo’s legs as he pushed him against the edge of the table, pressing against Gojyo’s cock through his pants. Gojyo rocked his hips, working the keen ache against Hakkai’s knee. He vaguely remembered a dream — pressure, gravity, Hakkai’s voice.

“Let go, Gojyo,” Hakkai said. He was breathing heavily, but then Gojyo could hardly breathe, either. He released Hakkai’s sides and opened his eyes. Hakkai winced when he yanked Gojyo’s shirt off over his head, and Gojyo looked down to where Hakkai’s wound was. Where he’d been grabbing just a few moments ago. The humming noise was getting louder.

“You all right?” Gojyo asked, hiking up Hakkai’s shirt to look at the wound. It was still ugly, but it didn’t look any worse.

“I’m fine,” Hakkai told him. He removed his lenses and set them on the counter. Then he removed his shirt, looking like he was trying not to wince again. He fell forward onto Gojyo, kissing his mouth, his nose, his chin, kneading Gojyo’s bare shoulders with his palms. The humming noise had reached a fever pitch, and Gojyo was going to orgasm in his jeans from rubbing his crotch against Hakkai’s hip like that.

Somehow they managed to get their shoes kicked off and their pants down before disaster struck. Hakkai was making it hard, though, the way he was grabbing Gojyo’s cock and staring at his face, all close up, with his one good eye. His gorgeous green eye.

Somewhere, in his haze of sex and breath and humming noises, Gojyo realized he was the one with his ass on the table. He didn’t care, though, as long as it happened fast. He wanted Hakkai any way he could have him. Being captured, even.

Then he got a look at Hakkai’s cock, standing stiff against his stomach — almost to his jagged wound-scar. Gojyo swallowed and grabbed Hakkai’s hands, which were pulling Gojyo’s thighs up like he was gonna fuck him that instant. It wasn’t a _horrible_ idea, but a bad idea, at least.

“Hey. Hakkai? Lube — in the pocket of my jeans—” he managed to huff against Hakkai’s mouth.

Hakkai licked sweat from Gojyo’s temple. “Ah. Yes, you’re right—”

“The front pocket.”

“Of course. Just a moment—”

“What the fuck is that _noise_? Oh, hell,” Gojyo said as Hakkai bent down, his breath on Gojyo’s cock.

But Hakkai was there for other business. “May I borrow your shoe, Gojyo?”

“Huh?”

Hakkai picked up Gojyo’s boot and tossed it. It hit the ZipCooker in the side, shutting it off. The cooker slid along the slick, grey counter-top until it was hanging a couple of centimeters off the edge. It stopped, staying upright.

“Phew,” Gojyo said, then _hell_ again, when Hakkai swiped the cleft of Gojyo’s ass with his suddenly cold, lube-coated finger.

Gojyo’s ass met the table again and again as Hakkai finally got around to fucking him. He was noisier than Gojyo would have thought he’d be, grunting with effort, and Gojyo groaned aloud with taking it and with trying to get leverage off the table to get closer, close enough to eat Hakkai’s sweaty hair. Once may be all they’d get, he knew. Hakkai had to stay, he had to go, or maybe he wouldn’t. If Hakkai kept saying _Gojyo_ like that, rough and hot in Gojyo’s ear, he might stay forever.

He didn’t see stars but he felt them, gravity, making him heavy, slow, huffing, stupid. Hakkai didn’t even have to touch his cock; he just had to keep fucking him just like _that_ , just _there_ , while his hand slid around on the table next to Gojyo’s head.

“I’m sorry, Gojyo,” Hakkai said after a while, his voice sounding tight.

“Why’re you — Ah!” Gojyo said and came, clutching Hakkai hard, everywhere. His question was answered when he felt Hakkai shudder and jerk between his thighs. He climaxed right afterwards, watching Gojyo, intent and intimate and grunting quietly in the hum-free kitchen.

There was only the sound of their breathing for half a minute or so — that and the feeling of Hakkai dripping sweat on him. Gojyo felt all rubbery and unable to move. Gravity. Ground gravity, Hakkai gravity, sucking his strength.

Then Hakkai pushed himself up with what looked like some effort.

“We never checked the security systems, Gojyo,” he said.

Gojyo chuckled. _Hakkai: fucked-up and awesome_. “Nope,” he said. “Uh. How are ya?”

Hakkai kissed Gojyo’s chin in a very sweet way. Gojyo felt melty to go with the sinky-rubbery. “Sore, but I think you were worth it.”

“’Course I am,” Gojyo told him. His stomach growled. He couldn’t help it. He was a guy.

“Nor have we eaten.” Hakkai stood. Like he wasn’t naked and glistening with sweat and Gojyo’s come, he plucked his Spex-lens from the table and put them on in a very prim, Hakkai-like way. “Why don’t you check your ship? The vid-line runs to a compartment offset from the main room, by the front door. I’ll rescue the food from the cooker.”

“Uh. Okay,” Gojyo said and stumbled off into the front room. He found the compartment Hakkai had told him about; it was filled with shiny new electronics. It took only a few seconds to see that the ship was fine and there’d been no movement on the grounds. Being naked while fiddling with the nice equipment was a hell of a lot of fun. Gojyo had business elsewhere, though, so he hurried.

Back in the kitchen, Hakkai was still naked and was arranging something on plates. He had a great ass, great for looking at, but at the moment Gojyo was also interested in the food. He walked up and took a closer look from over Hakkai’s shoulder. Hakkai had put what looked like some circles of compressed bread on the plates and was laying what looked like vegetable slices on top of them. In fact, they looked like —

“Dude. Hakkai. Are those radishes?”

Hakkai turned to look at Gojyo, the lens over his bad eye a little smeared with … something. “Yes. There seemed to be a lot of them, so I brought a few in. They make a very tasty sandwich.” He shoved one of the little stacks into Gojyo’s face.

Gojyo took the sandwich and examined it. Hakkai was staring at him, so he shrugged and bit into it. And damn if it wasn’t tasty, all right. He grinned at Hakkai and chewed.

“It’s the sauce in the cooker,” Hakkai told him.

Gojyo took another bite. “That’s it. I’m stayin’,” he said.

“Hmm.” Hakkai picked up his own sandwich and took a bite. He chewed and swallowed without saying anything.

Gojyo was just wondering if he should have said something so stupid when a _fritz_ ing noise came from the direction of their feet. Gojyo’s pocket-comm had been in his clothes, and it was going off. He scrambled to grab it as a tiny voice said, “ _Where the fuck are you, asshole?_ ”

Gojyo thumbed the two-way. “Yo, Cap’n. Still alive, are ya?”

“Tch. Alive and done with this fucking place,” Sanzo said. “We’re cleaning up here and then heading back. Be there in the morning. My ship better be fucking whole and unloaded with you ready to go when I get there.”

“Aye-aye,” Gojyo told him. “And o’course she’s good. What kinda loser you think I am?”

“I don’t have all goddamned night,” Sanzo said, and _fitz_ ed off.

“We have a few hours, at least,” Hakkai said when Gojyo looked at him. “At the very least.”

Gojyo thought about it. He was already a long goner where Hakkai was concerned, he knew that. But land was … land. And Hakkai — who knew what the hell was going on with him? He sure hadn’t said. Gojyo had a feeling that if Hakkai could tell him, he would. But he couldn’t, so he didn’t. Gojyo could respect that.

“You suggesting we fill ‘em?” he said, finally.

Hakkai smiled, and Gojyo wondered if he’d ever be able to leave.

***

This time, and the next, they at least took it to the bedroom. They took ‘em nice and slow, too. They didn’t discuss leaving or staying, just little things, things to fill a few hours.

At one point during a brief lull in the sex, Gojyo picked Hakkai’s Spex-lens off the bedside table and put them on his nose like he’d seen Hakkai do. He couldn’t see shit through them.

“Yes, I need them,” Hakkai told him, taking them back from Gojyo and replacing them carefully on the table. “For depth perception, at least until I can get to a hospital on a — er — larger colony somewhere and have my eye repaired. If I ever leave, that is.”

Gojyo thought he might like to see Hakkai with two eyes, but he wasn’t sure his heart could take it. He brushed his fingers over Hakkai’s temple, just missing the outer few stitches on his injured eye. “Was it a laze?”

“I think so,” Hakkai said. He sighed and crawled down Gojyo’s body to lick sweat out of his navel. Gojyo barely heard him when he continued. “It happened when Kanan died. Things were very hectic.”

Gojyo had decided not to push it, but Hakkai’s tongue was slippery on his skin and his own mouth would go asking questions before his head had told it to. “Do ya miss her? Kanan?”

Gojyo felt Hakkai’s fingers clench on his thigh, then relax. “Always. But it wouldn’t have been real, otherwise.”

Gojyo sighed. He was starting to understand the feeling. “Yeah.”

The Hakkai distracted him by sucking on the end of his cock and making some weird popping noises inside his cheeks, and Gojyo cradled Hakkai’s head in his palms and closed his eyes.

At some point later he must have slept for a short while, because he woke up. Hakkai was gone from the bedroom, though Gojyo could hear him puttering around somewhere.

Gojyo slid out of the bed and went to look out the window. It was still dark outside, but the kind of dark that threatened to start getting light, real soon. It’d been a long time since Gojyo had seen dawn from planetside. He heard clanking from the direction of the kitchen, and thought about going in there to join Hakkai, to sort of watch it together. He didn’t even feel stupid for thinking it.

Then he heard the _whoosh_ of a door and a voice that wasn’t Hakkai’s. It was deep and raspy.

“Looks like you’re up to your old tricks, Mister Cho,” the voice said.

“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t do it?” Hakkai said.

Gojyo grabbed his denims from the floor and found his beam-pistol tangled in them. He primed it and made to run from the room. After a second thought, he went back and pulled on his pants.

He tiptoed out into the hallway. and saw a person looking at Hakkai from just inside the garden-door. Hakkai noticed Gojyo there first and waved him down. Gojyo lowered his pistol but not his guard as he walked over to see what was up.

“How’d they get in here?”

The person turned and looked at him. It was a guy, really tall, with thick, black hair cut to his chin.

“You have company, Cho? Hi, handsome,” the guy said, winking at Gojyo.

Hakkai sighed at Gojyo’s raised eyebrow. “Gojyo, this is Director Guanyin. The other _she_ I’d mentioned to you,” he said. He turned to Guanyin. “Pardon me, Director. The last time I met with you, you were female.”

“And what a wonderful, technologically advanced, galactic society we have, that I get to change my mind,” Guanyin said. “Nice to meet you, Gojyo. Who said you were allowed company, Cho?”

“Gojyo is with Agricultural, Technology and Industrial Company. They brought the supplies I ordered.”

“Just making a delivery,” Gojyo said, looking around. There were several black-uniformed guards outside the diamond-shield door. He knew who Director Guanyin was, all right. The head of the Galcorp board, the official-unofficial head company of the known galaxy. Hakkai was messed up in some serious shit.

Guanyin eyed Gojyo with more interest. “We saw the ship, but I’d heard your captain was in the capital. Lucky thing, too. I hear he took care of some pests for me.”

Like it was fate, Gojyo saw a flash of white and a golden head outside. The next he knew, the door had _whooshed_ open and Sanzo had stomped inside. He looked at Gojyo first, then at Guanyin. “What the hell is going on with your fucking planet?” he bitched at last. At Guanyin, not Gojyo.

“Little respect, Captain?” Guanyin grinned at him. “Black Crow, Inc. had a few more revenge squads than I’d thought. This was the last of them. At least, that’s what my intelligence department tells me.”

“Fuck intelligence.” Sanzo whipped a smoke from an inside pocket of his brown jacket pocket and lit it. Then he looked at Hakkai. “May I?”

Hakkai nodded, but he hit the panel to open the door to the garden. It stayed open.

“Cap’n. Where’s Goku?” Gojyo asked.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Sanzo said. Gojyo stared, and Sanzo _tched_. “He’s outside, checking on the plants. We’re leaving. I hate dealing in government bullshit.”

 _Just like that?_ Gojyo felt a sudden panic, a lack of gravity, letting him float away. “Wait. Don’t we have to clear shit up here?” was the best he could come up with.

“We’re clear,” Sanzo said. And just as quickly and angrily as he’d come in, he left. Gojyo noticed that the guards moved aside respectfully to let him pass. And the dead body was gone.

He glanced at Hakkai, who was looking pretty glazed and stiff.

Director Guanyin spoke. “Your Captain is correct. You’ll have to leave.” He turned to look at Hakkai. “I always liked you, Cho, even if you did upset the balance of power on Mars Colony Four. But I want you focusing on business. You owe it.”

“I do,” Hakkai said.

He looked so miserable that Gojyo felt a sudden, weird clarity. They’d lost this one. He and Hakkai. But it didn’t mean he couldn’t ever come back.

“Gotta get my clothes,” Gojyo said in a slow, deliberate voice, trying to break through Hakkai’s fugue. “You want to help me find them, Hakkai?”

Hakkai nodded. Just as slowly and deliberately as he’d spoken, Gojyo walked to the bedroom, making sure that Hakkai followed him. He was slow as he pulled on his shirt, buckled on his belt, and fastened his shoes.

Hakkai sat on the bed and started speaking all at once, like he couldn’t get all his words out in the short time they had. “They can’t fault me for telling you now, I think. I killed rather a lot of people, Gojyo. When Kanan died. More than is legal. The director was impressed instead of suitably disgusted and released me on her — his — recognizance. He had his eye on this planet and offered me a chance to work off my sentence here. Doing his work. There’s something about Huian that they see as profitable. As part of my release, my inheritances are invested here as well. Since Kanan had wanted to live here, I resolved to do my best. To learn the life, to start over. To be alone forever, perhaps, but to feel that I had atoned somewhat for the lives I took.”

He stopped for a moment, and again Gojyo’s mouth ran ahead of his brain.

“More than was legal? Fuck, that must have been a lot.”

“Indeed it was, I’m ashamed to say.”

“How come I never heard about it? I hear everything.”

“Intelligence departments are used to cover up as well as to discover, Gojyo,” Hakkai said. He said it in his dry voice, and his small smile made Gojyo’s heart want to open wide and swallow him whole. Both of them. The planet.

“They can’t keep you here, alone, forever, right?” Gojyo asked, sitting next to Hakkai on the bed.

“Now I don’t think so, so much,” Hakkai said. He touched Gojyo’s hair.

“I know how to fly ships. And use a comm,” Gojyo reminded him.

“That you do. How long is your next trip?”

Gojyo played with his own fingers in his lap, afraid to touch Hakkai, afraid it might bring him down too much; they didn’t need that. “Next haul is only a few weeks. And this one is only twenty-four, one-way.”

“I suppose I can handle that,” Hakkai said. “You could visit.”

“You could order more stuff,” Gojyo said.

“Break it up in there, gentlemen,” the Director demanded from the other room.

Gojyo stood, stretching like he hadn’t a care in the world even though he had, because suddenly planetside and dawns and food and Hakkai sounded a lot better than freedom and sex in nowhere places. It sounded like … like real life, in fact.

“Well,” he said when Hakkai stood as well. “See ya.”

“My guards have very large guns,” the director yelled.

“I’m coming! Shit.” Gojyo didn’t even get a kiss; they just sort of brushed each other’s palms, like a high-five, and then he left and didn’t look back. He lit up a cigarette for the walk back, one last smoke in the big outdoors before the three-week journey to their next stop.

He neared the _Dragon_ to see that Sanzo had the same idea and was outside leaning on one of the landing pylons, sucking in as much smoke as possible. Somehow Sanzo had uncoded the security lock; Goku was already inside the hold, clearing up and locking the hoverskids.

Gojyo leaned on the other side of Sanzo’s pylon, and they smoked.

“Should’ve stayed on the fucking ship like I told you,” Sanzo said in a quiet, almost non-threatening, voice.

“Nah,” Gojyo said.

The finished their smokes and walked aboard.

***

They were almost a day out when Gojyo began wishing he’d had at least a kiss goodbye. Hakkai was not only a great cook and an awesome, fucked-up guy, but he’d been a great kisser.

He hadn’t transed down planetside, yet. Hakkai hadn’t transed up, either; Gojyo had the freqs locked to know for sure. They’d talk when they were good and ready.

Gojyo looked at the stars, in a black empty that was still brightened to grey by Huian’s sun. They’d reset themselves into familiar positions. It was funny how he could pick some of them out, from up in space. There was Vega; not too far from that was his old home-planet. At least he finally understood what made people settle down, even if he still didn’t know how they could be born somewhere and never leave.

The door whizzed open and Gojyo rounded to see Sanzo coming into the cockpit. At first he thought Sanzo might be kicking him out to use the comm, but Sanzo didn’t even look at him. He flopped into the copilot’s chair, then kicked off the dash and rolled into a three-sixty. Then he rolled again. Gojyo couldn’t help but watch him; he’d never seen Sanzo do anything like it before.

Sanzo rolled to a halt at ninety degrees, scooting until his head was hanging off the back of the chair. He saw Gojyo looking at him and frowned.

“My neck fucking hurts from sleeping on dirt.”

“Uh-huh,” Gojyo said. He turned back to the console and hit the button for vent. He picked one of his few, precious cigarettes out of the pack shoved into the dash and lit up. He heard the _snick_ of Sanzo’s lighter as he did the same.

“Speaking of,” Sanzo said. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling-panel. “There are a couple of cartons for you in the hold. You’d better fucking appreciate it.”

“Oh, I do,” Gojyo said. But he wasn’t _that_ stupid. “What do I gotta do for ‘em?”

Sanzo rolled forward until he was upright. He stubbed out his cigarette into Gojyo’s cup on the dash. “Teach Goku how to fucking fly this thing. If you’re going to be fucking running off on me everywhere, I want someone here who knows how to fly the ship.” With that pronouncement, Sanzo rolled out of his chair.

“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” Gojyo said. He felt suddenly fond of Sanzo as the door _whooshed_ shut behind him. He, Gojyo, was too fucking nice, that was the problem. He paged Goku to get the hell up there. There was no point in wasting time.

 **END.**

 _Thank you for reading! Concrit, comments welcomed._

 


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